Perfection in Error
by Nevermore.Rose
Summary: Lily Evans has developed an obsession with perfection. Can she be shown where true perfection lies?A oneshot illustrating the short beginning of Lily and James' relationship.Lily's POV


**A/N:** Hey everyone! Alright so, I decided to post my notes at the beginning of the cdhapter so as not to ruin any mood I may have created at the end. I've been reading ALOT of Marauder fanfiction lately, and I'll have to say, most are mroe enteresting than those that take place in Harry's Era. Anyways, I felt really connected with Lily. Moreso with Tonks, actually, but with Lily noen the less. This oneshot I'm rather proud of because, looking over it, I think I've explored a whole new side of her. Anyways, I have NO CLUE how this fanfiction came to be. This one took absoulty no planning, it really did come straight from the soul .One day I randomly sat down, and I jsut started writing this. I had no clue where it was going but I just kept writing, and slowly, the story began to blossom.The whole writing process jut had a weird flow, absoultly no effort was involved. Tell me in any reviews you may post how this made you feel, what emotions it may have envoked. I'm hoping that something that came so natural to me may be able to make others feel something as well.

Anyways, ENJOY!

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I am dead now.

My body lost in a sea of time and space, and as these two parallels continue, I will be forever forgotten. Death is a cruel thing, but I asked for it, wished for it. So that I could save another.

But I am in a wonderful place now, smiling down at a world so wrong, yet full of wonders that one could only possibly imagine. I have found love.

My angel is gone now too, from that world below. We stand together here, in this strange place.

We met years ago, at school, where I was a strong and humble girl, who along side my closest friend Avian Summers, despised his group of mischievous delinquents known only as the Marauders.

My wavy fiery hair and emerald eyes were signature to my independent, persevering personality. Oval faced and focused, I was so ready, so proud, waiting to achieve greatness.

And greatness I did achieve, but at a price. For my work, I lost my friends, my family, and my life. But I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me begin properly.

I remember it clearly, boarding the train that fine last year of my education. Hogwarts had treated me well, but I still felt so unsatisfied. My life goal at the time was to doing something great, extradonary, so that I may be remembered for eternity and beyond.

That had started at my mother's funeral. Suicide is a nasty thing, the most selfish act one can commit, but my mother did so none the less. I found myself unable to cry. I refused to cry. Sorrow had driven her to such an act, and sorrow I refused to give into. It would make me like her.

_Emotions make one week_ I had concluded. _From now on, I shall never feel._

The funeral was open casket. I still remember slowly approaching my dead mother's body, her cherry wood coffin only playing up her exquisite burgundy hair. My mother was so beautiful, why give away such gifts from God so quickly?

I remember how I had scoffed at the very idea of God at that moment. How could any God supposedly so good let such terrible things like this happen? I remember it took me years to build up my faith in Him again.

The mourning flowers lay around her, engulfing the sides of her coffin, and I looked in. My mother looked like an angel, merely asleep. Her lips were white and frosted, and so was her skin, pale and lifeless. I remember slowly moving up my hand to touch her own.

_Cold as ice. _I remembered thinking.

My mother would leave this world, and she would scar my father and I, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles with her memory, for that is what people do. We scar each other's souls with our presence, with them knowing us, we forever alter a person.

And if I had any children one day, they would know of her as well. But through time, as my children had children, who grew up and had children of their own, I realized that one day; my mother would completely be forgotten.

Slowly, with time, she would fade from the memory of those of this world completely.

And one day, so would I.

It was at this precise moment that I had promised myself that I would not be forever forgotten. I would persevere, be the best I could, at everything, until I became something great, so that history would remember me forever, and so that I would not fade into the abyss, which all are surely lead after their departure from this world.

I suppose that's where it started; my obsession with perfection. I strove for excellence constantly, in everything I did. My schoolwork was without error, my attendance impeccable. Everything I applied myself to, I demanded perfection from. And normally, I succeeded in this perfection, but I knew I wasn't perfect at all. Not in the slightest.

But James Potter thought so. He followed me everywhere, which I hated, and asked me to various dates religiously, all of which I denied. Something about Potter frightened me. At the time, I could barely admit it to myself. There was something past his tousled ebony hair and warm hazel eyes that I knew threatened me. Of course, I could not figure it out, though I stared at him occasionally, trying to solve the puzzle that was James Potter.

But over time, I started to, _feel_ something indescribably when I stared at him. Often after one of our fights, I would lock eyes with him, a warm sensation would boil from my chest and travel slowly, like honey dripping from a spoon, to the rest of my body, before I jerked my head away, walking briskly in the opposite direction.

I would not have this. I refused to give into this intense feeling. I had learned those few years ago, that when one fed into intense emotions, one would, sooner or later, be engulfed in intense misery.

Like mother.

And I stopped, midway in the hall. James frightened me intensely, and now I knew why.

He was so passionate so full of sticky and destructive emotion in everything he did.

From his vigor on the Quidittch pitch to his excitement to pull of another meaningless prank, from the despise he harbored from the Slytherins to…to the passion he held for me.

And I knew that if I were ever with him, he would try to surface the emotions I had worked so intensly to bury.

Because feeling numb was better than feeling weak and hopless.

Avian did not understand me though. She knew, could see in my face, that I harbored some emotions for the infamous Potter. Occasionally, she would approach me, asking what I was trying to accomplish by denying something I wanted. Even she did not know of my inner battle to stop feeling at all.

But one can only deny that warm, slow feeling for so long.

The day I said yes may very well have went down in Hogwarts history forever. It started out like many of his other tries.

This one, a classic favorite of Avian's, consisted of chasing me around Hogwarts with a bouquet in his hands, screaming proposals to accompany him anywhere and everywhere. It was impossible to outrun him or loose him. He could suddenly appear anywhere, and never did I once hear the crackels of apparition where he popped up. James could appear out of thin air.

So this particular session had started in the great hall, where he had bounded in with a huge grin on his striking face, his kness and hands covered with dirt, clutching a bouquet of freshly picked flowers he had obviously stolen from the grounds himself, as he was covered in dusty proof.

"LILY FLOWER!" He called shrilly to me as I tried to hide myself behind Avian. Of course, nothing can stand in the way when Potter's on a mission.

And I, apparently, was it.

"I was wondering, have you heard about the Hogsmade weekend coming up?"

"Not if it involves you"

"Good--What? Oh, c'mon Lily, I promise I'll be good. I'll give you my word _along_ with my undying love" he said sarcastically, down on his knees and arms outstretched to the heavens, the delicate flowers at his feet.

"Well, it's wonderful that you'll be good, just…do it with someone else please." I said, getting up.

"Aww, Lily, don't be like that" he persisted, standing before the walkway facing the door. I tried to walk around the table, but he ran to that side quickly, and as I moved back, so did he.

I looked around my surroundings. It was a Saturday, and everyone was elsewhere, the great hall nearly empty.

_Perfect_. I thought, and I summoned a cloud of smoke, a simple wandless magic charm for an expert in the subject such as myself, which obstructed his view, and ran right past him.

Unfourtunatly, my instant-cloud had faded enough for James to spot a flicker of my blazing red hair flowing behind me as I ran out the doors, and within seconds, the chase had begun. I ducked behind a wall and he ran past me. Poking my head out from the corner slightly, I saw him slow to a stop and look from side to side. Frustration flickered on his face prominently enough for even me to see, several feet back.

Then I saw him draw a piece of parchment out from his back pocket, unfold it, mutter something, and then study the paper contently. Then, he turned around on his heals, put the parchment back in his pocket, and grinned that most annoying, cocky grin.

He was starring at me.

So I bolted down the other way, I took every corridor, every stair case, and at sudden turns I would actually bump into him, where he would playfully ask me to reconsider before I turned him down once more and ran in the opposite direction.

I kept running and running until I found a door I had never noticed before, I ran inside and locked the door, thinking it would be something like a broom closet. I turned around, my back to the door, and exhaled slowly, sinking down to a sitting position, my head in my hands.

This was terrible. This time, the running and the fear of being found, it was almost traumatic. I realized that I wasn't running from James, not really.

I was running from emotion. From it's complexity, from it's complications, and from the way it would ruin my perfection that I believed would one day permanently etch my name forever in history. How wrong I was.

And with that sudden realization, I burst into tears, feeling them burn my skin as I let them flow freely down my cheeks. I didn't have to be perfect when no one would see me.

I hate this. I hate never being able to truly be myself, I hated having to lock away all thoughts and emotions until they burst in out in some strange room all alone.

I started shaking, my sobbing increased in magnitude. I was lost, rocking and spurting tears like some melodramatic fountain.

I started to inch away from the door slowly, going to a fluffy, inviting carpet in the far corner of the room, with two chairs paced on it's opposite sides. I wouldn't ever be able to make it to those chairs.

Instead, I lay on my side, curling up into a ball, rocking and shaking with powerful tears of suppressed emotions.

And then, James peaked through the door.

And for once, he didn't really _try_ anything. He shut it quietly behind him, cast a quick silencing charm, and slowly walked over and sat beside me.

His movements were exaggerated and slow, I could tell he didn't want to frighten me. Slowly he wrapped me in his arms, pulling me closer until my torso was resting on him, my arms crumpled close between his chest and mine, and my legs flailed out over the carpet, and I continued to cry in hysterics.

"Lily…what…what is it?"

"I'm…just…afraid" I managed through my sobs.

James put his hand delicately under my chin, and lifted my face up until my eyes met his.

"Lily, you try too hard."

I paused.

"Wha—What?"

"Lily, no one expects you to be good at everything. Your wonderful just the way you are. The greatest people aren't those who always win."

That angered me. To be suddenly told that everything I had based my life upon was a lie was defiantly not something one such as I needed to hear. And although his embrace gave me more comfort than had felt since the day my mother took her own life, I pushed myself up aggressively and stormed to the door.

I grabbed it's handle fervently and yelled back, the stinging tears threatening to leave my eyes again "Then who does? WHO MATTERS JAMES? WHAT'S-WHAT'S THE POINT OF ANYTHING! WHO IN THIS WORLD IS GREAT IF NOT THOSE WHO REFUSE TO FAIL,THOSE WHO WILL NEVER FALL?"

We both paused, and slowly, in a soft, barely audible voice, he whispered "Those who get back up after they've finally fallen."

He got up, moving slowly to me again.

"Lily, great people are remembered for being able to overcome any obstacle, or die trying, not for making everything so perfect that nothing wrong can ever happen."

And then he looked at me, for the first time, a real raw, full-hearted look. One like I have never seen before. He looked like he was pleading, pleading with me, to listen to him.

"Lily, I love you, because once, I saw the real you. Who you are under the top grades and the perfect attendance records."

"When?" was all I could mutter, dumbfounded by the truth he had just told me.

"So many times. In the little things you do. When you sacrifice your own time to study with those first years, when you guide people throughout the school, when you helped set up Frank and Alice with Avian-"

"It was her idea" I almost grinned at the memory, though the tears still fell from my glassy eyes freely

"But it was your passion, your pure honesty that brought them together. Lily, your amazing. And you don't have to be anything more than that. Lily, I know what happened to your mom."

I almost choked.

I hadn't spoken or thought of my mother ever since her funeral, ever since I made that unspoken vow to myself, so long ago.

"What do you think is going to happen to you Lily. Do you think that if you allow yourself to _feel_, to make mistakes, that you'll end up like her? Lily, you're not your mother."

"But James, she died because she was weak. Because she couldn't handle life. Because she felt empty inside, she wasn't strong enough for it, how can I be?"

"Lily. You're made of stronger stuff than her. You have never given up on anything, and you never will."

" But what if I fail, what if I loose everything, I could never deal with that kind of pain. Never."

" Don't be afraid of falling Lily. Broken bones make the places you injured stronger. Be afraid of never getting back up."

"But what if I can't?"

"Then, if you let me, I will carry you back."

All my life, I had believed that everything I faced must be conquered on my own. I never considered another person in the equation, ever.

But looking at the passion in his eyes, I could see that James would never, ever, let me go. I would never be alone. And I had someone to lean on. No longer did I have to be a lone statue, proud and grand with nothing to support me. I had someone to lean on.

James had promised to forever be my guardian angel, my saviour from the darkness I so feared would envelope me like it had my own mother. Somehow, I felt like James was sent to me by God. Who else could command such angels?

In an instant, James had brought me back into religion, he had given me a miracle.

And I stopped sobbing.

And we stood their for awhile, my head on his chest, our arms wrapped tightly around eachother, until I raised my head up and slowly moved my face towards his. And inch from his own, we stood still.

"Thank you…" I stated simply, and leaned in to press my lips to his own. "You saved me"

A slow warm sensation oozed throughout my body, an ultimate calm. I imagined that this would be what it would feel like to drink liquid sunset. Yet at the same time, neverous, electric jolts shot through me.

Kissing James Potter was the absolute most wonderful thing I had ever experienced.

It was at that moment James had proved to me eternally my worth. That I had a place, a purpose. That I could be free to laugh and cry and fail the occasional quiz or skip a boring potions class. James Potter gave me back the key I had forever hidden that unlocked my heart, and all it's wild, imperfect depths.

And I couldn't wait to feel again.

To feel alive once more.

And I knew, that at times, it would hurt.

But feeling alive was worth it.

And one day, I discovered, that dying for the one's you love is too.

Because in this type of death, you leave the world feeling complete.

Dying for my only child, Harry, was like that first kiss with James eternally.

Though when it happened I was terrified. But I knew that if nothing else, no one would touch my son. I would not hurt him, I would not deprive him of a wonderful mother like my own had. But when I had to choose between his life or my own, I knew what action I had to take.

I had finally reached the perfection I so longed for. I felt it, deep in my bones.

In being myself, without the agonizing restraints of constant pressure, in James' eyes, and lastly, in sacrificing myself to save my son, I had found it.

Because that's what life's about.

Our purpose is to find the purity, the good in all of our blessings, in all of the things wrong with the world.

We must find perfection in error.


End file.
